Turn Around
by wolfdancer333
Summary: Based on Skip Beat Chapter 268! MAJOR SPOILERS! Stuck in the middle of the fight between Kyoko and Ren, Yashiro's gentle patience finally snaps as he unleashes his current thoughts. Is it enough to reach through the darkness? Or is it far too late to turn it all around?


"You're an idiot."

The heavy silence from the back-seat of the car only irritated the driver further and his left eyebrow twitched as he flicked on his turn signal.

"No because even an idiot wouldn't have caused the girl they love any pain."

Finally, from the miasmic cloud festering in the back where the vague form of a man sat, quietly came, "And what about _my_ pain? Aren't you my manager? Whose side are you on?"

"Your future wife's."

Thick tension slowly abated at the comment, the mood lifting enough for the dark cloud to lighten in it's intensity as they both allowed the last few minutes to truly settle in.

The voice was still monotone and lacking any real emotion but the iciness had shattered. It was low like a scolded child – but Yashiro really didn't have it in him to sympathize with his charge and, admittedly, best friend. "You're already taking her side?"

Yashiro felt his lips twitch as, finally, the tension drained out of him and his body sunk into the seat. He thought over his reply, heavy emotions still ringing loud and clear in an angry, teary shout that was etched into the car.

When Yashiro, Yukihito woke up to pick up Kyoko-chan, he never imagined how the day would go. Arriving only a bit early only to see her fraternizing with the enemy – and though Ren was definitely in the wrong and Yashiro was most certainly going to tear him a new one, especially after the text he just received – that had really only been an impending warning to the disaster that would ensue. Peeking in the rear-view mirror at the man clearly drowning in his own darkness, he couldn't help but take a bit of pity out of his heart.

Whatever Yashiro was feeling – and he was feeling a hell of a lot after the explosion that was Mogami, Kyoko – it was nothing compared to what Ren must be feeling.

As in the wrong as the man was, he had only reacted to the emotions he'd been bottling up for years involving said girl. Eventually, the cork had to pop.

And it did.

Turning into the lane leading to the highway to take them to Ren's shoot, Yashiro finally replied, keeping the atmosphere light but not avoiding the real issue. "When you're in the wrong, yes. I'm not having Kyoko-chan be mad at us both. But, Ren-"

"Don't, Yashiro." The deeply low tone did nothing to hide the threat and though Yashiro definitely winced, he knew he had to do this, not as a manager but as a man watching his best friend be an idiot.

"When are you going to stop self-sabotaging your own relationship with her? Did you look at her when you were talking? Did you see her face, Ren? Does that look like a girl in love with her abusive ex to you?"

"Yashiro…."

The warning was clearer than before, sharper where before it had been harsh and low, and doused in exactly what Ren was capable of. Swallowing past the spike in his blood pressure – seriously, either both of these two or one of them were going to cause him to have a heart attack! – Yashiro marshalled up whatever strength he had left of the courage withering to dust in his belly, sweat dotting his forehead as he pulled the car to a slow crawl in the morning Tokyo traffic.

"You hurt her, Ren. Seriously hurt her, and for what? Jealousy?" As the car came to a rolling pause in the bright sunny morning, Yashiro wished the icy God of Shadows and Violence, the Demon Lord himself, wasn't sitting in the back-seat and drilling holes into his skull through the leather of the car. "She doesn't know _why_ you're behaving like this. To her, you just told her she was in love with him and no one would blame her."

"Because she is."

Definitely a ticked nerve, Yashiro thought triumphantly. It was about time at least one of the idiots – Kyoko was less of an idiot and more of an….innocently naive puppy – showed some sort of emotion. "Have you asked her that?"

"Oh, no, I didn't think to ask her if she was in love with the man who treated her like shit and utterly broke her…." Ah, there was BJ. This time, Yashiro did audibly gulp, especially when the King of Darkness leaned toward the driver's seat so his chin rested on the edge, his mouth level with Yashiro's ear. "While she was screaming at me, defending him, _to me_, without telling me, _again_. Oh, and also while telling me I didn't know what I was talking about and that it was _none of my business_? Would that have been a good time, Yashiro?"

All of his pride as a manager, as a best friend, as a _man_, hung on him being able to open his mouth and speak.

Which he did.

Squeakily.

"A better time than her avoiding you for the rest of your lives and into the afterlife!"

Ren didn't move back but he didn't reach over to slit his throat either so Yashiro counted that as a victory. Releasing a sigh, both of frustration at his charges and relief at living another day, he leaned his head back and lifted hand to brush his glasses to the crown of his head.

As he rubbed at his face he mumbled, "She's asked me not to pick her up for a while. To cool her head. She _asked _me, Ren, for time. _Me_. Because I'm connected to _you_."

This time the hunk of darkness did move back but the car remained submerged in deathly freezing temperatures not native to Japan. Almost certain he was experiencing an Ice Age, Yashiro reached, with his eyes closed and one hand over his face, towards the temperature dial.

He never made contact.

"I hate her."

Eyes popping open so wide Yashiro was sure they cracked, he stared at the soft interior of the roof of the car, ears ringing in disbelief. Okay, he was sure he heard that wrong. All these intense, wild emotions were getting the better of him! There was no way Ren just said he –

But he did.

And he said it again, low and deep, trembling with unrestrained emotions yet lacking any emotion at all. "I hate her. I hate how she makes me feel….And lose control. She frustrates me, annoys me, she's ridiculously, laughably gullible and naive. And for fuck's sake, she's a child!"

Sensing there was more to come – and not able to say anything much anyway due to the shock of the words themselves let alone being frozen in the next Ice Age by the Demon Lord – Yashiro remained quiet and the next words that fell from Ren's lips were much softer, lacking the icy venom of his last ones. Any other time, these words would have been filled with a touch of tenderness and spoken in soft, sweet tones that now lacked anything but a lingering heaviness of what should have been there.

And wasn't.

"But then, sometimes…."

Yashiro's heart stopped beating and he held his breath. When the words finally came, full of a void of emotion that should have been there but was missing, ice flooded his veins. "I really, really love her."

Neither man mentioned the cracked whisper at the end of his words or the tears waiting to fall in the back of their eyes.

What worried Yashiro the most weren't Ren's words. The man often spoke in ways he didn't mean but never, and never while speaking of _Kyoko-chan_, did the 21 year old man sound empty like he was running low on the capacity to feel the emotions he should have felt. What worried Yashiro was the lack of _life_ – it was like it was only a shell sitting in the back-seat, saturated in darkness and caving into itself.

A hard knot rose into his throat and Yashiro sighed heavily, cracking open his eyes to check traffic and, seeing as they weren't moving yet, closed them again.

The monotone words lie in the air like shrapnel from an exploded bomb – Kyoko – with embers still smouldering and with only the slightest flame would ignite in a chain reaction that would, inevitably, lead to the empty shell hunkered in the back to inwardly collapse.

For the last almost 3 years, Yashiro had stood first by Ren and then Kyoko-chan, as both a confidant and a friend and a manager. He'd dealt with Ren's mood swings which border-lined on childish or a sulking teenager, he'd plotted and planned with the President, and he'd even gone so far as to strike up a communication with Kyoko-chan's protective and downright terrifying best friend!

….Though that last one was swiftly developing unexpectedly and when his head fell forward, eyes slowly opening, the world was a blur of colour and light before it all snapped into focus.

And something very close to his patience snapped with it.

"You don't."

The mass of darkness with blank brown orbs buried within lifted it's….Shroud, daring Yashiro to speak.

Which he did, foolishly, but with no regrets. "You heard me. And stop sulking like a lovesick girl!"

"Funny hearing that from you."

Yashiro waved the humor away and then cursed his luck as, at last, the traffic started to pull forward in a rush of gleaming cars and rumbling tires. He slowly pulled the car forward, focusing on the cars around him and avoiding the bright glares of the sun's light bouncing off the metal frames as his patience set off the first bomb.

"Because I care, Ren. One of us has to. And you very clearly don't."

"….Excuse me?"

Come forth, Dark Lord, for your sacrifice has willingly offered itself.

Powering through on whatever the hell had possessed him to ride headlong into the demon's jaws, Yashiro's gut clenched and then the words were just spewing from him like word lava from the volcano of his thoughts, unable to stem the flow quickly filling the car. "You don't love her. Not as much as I thought, clearly. Because you don't hurt people you love, Ren. That poor girl….It looked like you broke her heart again. Again! Don't you get it? In order to break something, you have to be in some proximity to it. She let you _in_ and all you did was show her you're just like Sho. He loves her too and what does he do? Hurt her. Hurt her constantly, all the time, over jealousy and misplaced love and arrogance…."

Yashiro paused only to take a huge lungful of air, the words cascading out of him, over his lips and washing the car in a rambled torrent of thoughts. "You were a rude and inconsiderate jerk to Kyoko-chan and if you truly love her, you would be better than Sho and not the same person who broke her little heart and I'm sorry, please forgive me-DON'T KILL ME!"

The demonic, drearily silent presence in the back prompted Yashiro, who was already wired from his tangent, to try and bow seated in the driver's seat. All he succeeded in doing was making himself jump and scream – which he would not, _Ren_, say was like a high schoolgirl in a haunted house – when his forehead hit the horn in a long, drawn out beep that had the other drivers and the other cars all retaliating. Groaning, he buried his burning red cheeks into his hands and ignored the confused, irritated shouts of the cars around them.

Lamenting about his death and all the ways the Dark Lord would take his soul, he didn't notice it right away but when he did, he felt both immensely relieved and terrifyingly horrified. Ren was laughing.

Not the cool chuckle he was known for or the gently resonating laugh that bubbled up when he was with Kyoko-chan but full blown, arm over his stomach, eyes squeezed shut _laughing_.

And as Yashiro burned with confused embarrassment and joy at escaping Ren's wrath for overstepping boundaries, Ren heaved with laughter and had to cough a few times to clear his throat before he could speak.

"W-Why would I kill you?"

Was this a trick question? Would he die no matter how he answered? Truthful was the way to go then! I'm on your side, Kyoko-chan, he desperately pleaded. "I insulted you."

The amusement was palpable. "You've also supported me endlessly, with my career and my relationship. I'm a big boy. I can handle a few insults."

And then, without thinking, Yashiro's mouth beat his brain. "But you can't handle your jealousy over a teenage girl who has no idea how either of you two men feel about her? You can handle me insulting you….But you can't make a move on the girl you love?"

Throwing his hands over his head with a frightened shout when he heard rustling, Yashiro hurriedly yelped, "SPARE ME!"

"Yashiro-san, I think Mogami-san is rubbing off on you." Laughter rang clear in the words before a hand settled, gently, on his shoulder.

Slowly unfurling his hands from over his head, he looked out to see the car was the same, he was alive, and the darkness in the back was no longer seeping into his bones and leeching the life from him. Turning, he met the Angelic Prince head-on and his eyes widened. "Y-You aren't mad?"

"About the insults?" Those eyebrows rose elegantly before Ren shrugged in a casual manner. "I've been called worse. It….Was exactly what I needed to hear."

To Yashiro's great shock, Ren then did something the boy hadn't really done since he'd met him and they had barely been speaking: while seated in the back-seat, the man bent his 6 foot frame into a low bow until his forehead touched the middle console and his hair draped into the cup holders. His hand on Yashiro's shoulder fell back to his side as he bowed towards his manager for the first time in years, deeply and respectfully. Yashiro could definitely blame Kyoko-chan for the way tears built in his eyes and he had to push his glasses back up to the top of his head. The girl always left everyone in her wake in a whirlwind of emotions, not always caused by her but brought about because of her, and Yashiro would certainly blame her for this.

Later.

And long after she and Ren were married.

Smiling at the deep brown hair of the man he's looked to as a best friend, Yashiro bowed his head but kept his posture, keeping his hands on the wheel and glancing at traffic, waiting until Ren rose. It meant a lot that Ren had bowed his head to him not because it was conceited but because it showed a respect between them that he hadn't been sure was there. As far as clients and prodigies go, Ren was difficult on a good day but somewhere during the time he met Ren and then they later met Kyoko-chan, it had become less of a job, less of a duty.

And besides: these two were absolutely helpless without him! They'd never survive as a couple without him!

When the giant man finally rose, he didn't settle into the back like Yashiro thought he would but, with graceful movements, shifted into the passenger seat with his long limbs and lanky muscles. Slipping his seatbelt over his shoulder, he buckled in before he turned to face the wide-eyed, paled manager that considered, for the first time, if this was worth the money.

Ren smiled congenially, mask firmly in place, and though Yashiro hated that face, he preferred that to the death God he'd been about to face earlier. "Yashiro-san, can I ask for a favor?"

Blinking wearily, he pressed on the gas pedal as traffic finally began to move – and he could relax that they wouldn't actually be late or that his death was quickly approaching – and he gathered the guts to ask. "What favor?"

"Nothing big."

It clearly was. No way was Yashiro buying that shining smile or the relaxed way Ren was slouching back into the passenger seat, mouth curled in a smirk that resembled more of a shark than a man. He sent a narrow glare towards his charge as traffic picked up to a steady pace across the highway, hands relaxed but steady on the wheel.

And that was all that saved him from careening off the highway when Ren finally stated his favor with all the finesse of a predator finally catching it's prey unguarded.

"Turn the car around."


End file.
